o intimidate
Scalawags, Carpet-baggers and negroes, whose arrogance had become
intolerable. General George W. Gordon prepared the oath and ritual for
the Klan, which was founded in the town of Pulaski, Giles County,
Tennessee. General Forrest took the oath in 1866, in Room 10 of the old
Maxwell House, at Nashville.

It is my belief that the Ku Klux Klan has been a good deal maligned.
Many of its members were men of high type. I have been told, for
instance, that one southern gentleman who has since been in the cabinet
of a President of the United States, was active in the Ku Klux. I
withhold his name because the purposes of the Ku Klux Klan, and the
urgent need which called it into being, are not yet fully understood in
the North, and for the further reason that depredations committed by
other bodies were frequently charged to the Ku Klux, giving it a bad
name. So far as I can discover the Ku Klux endeavored to avoid violence
where it could be avoided. Its aim seems to have been to frighten
negroes and bad whites into behaving themselves or going away; though
sometimes, of course, bad characters had to be killed. It must be
remembered that the ballot was denied former Confederate soldiers for
quite a period after the War, that they were not allowed to possess
firearms, and that, at the same time, negro troops were quartered in the
South. In many parts of the South the government and the courts were in
the hands of third-rate Northerners (carpet-baggers) who had come down
to dominate the defeated section, and who used the Scalawags (disloyal
southern whites) and negroes for their own purposes. Obviously this was
outrageous, and equally obviously, a proud people, even though defeated,
could not endure it. The service performed by the Ku Klux Klan seems to
have been comparable with that rendered by the Vigilantes of early
western days. Something had to be done and the Klan did it.

In 1869 General Forrest ordered the Klan to disband, which it did; but
owing to the fact that it was a secret organization, and that disguises
had been used, it was an easy matter for mobs, not actually associated
with the Ku Klux, to assume its costume and commit outrages in its name.

* * * * *

In writing of Raleigh I referred to the post-bellum activities of the
Confederate cruiser _Shenandoah_. Captain Dabney M. Scales, a
distinguished citizen of Memphis, was on the _Shenandoah_. Born in
Orange County, Vir